Hurricane Debby made landfall early this morning near Florida’s Big Bend region and has “weakened” into a tropical storm. I put quotes around the word weakened to make a point.

That point is when people hear a tropical system has weakened, they automatically assume the worst is over. That is not always the case, because storm strength is measured in wind speed, and tropical systems are more than wind. In fact, storm surge and flooding are the top two killers in a hurricane.

In Debby’s case, while she likely will remain a tropical storm but will slow down and stall, dumping copious amounts of rain on SE Georgia and the Carolina coastal plain and raising the specter of catastrophic flooding, similar to what Harvey did to Houston in 2017.

This is likely just the beginning of a rough hurricane season for the United States. Climate change looms large as part of the threat, as has been expected and predicted for years now. One example is Gulf of Mexico waters hitting 95 degrees off the coast of Louisiana, echoing similar measurements off Florida. These warm waters fuel hurricane development and it is generally accepted that around 80 degrees provide the fuel for developing hurrianes. The 90-degree water is basically high-octane fuel.

Weather’s tendrils insert themselves into all kinds of subjects, from the economy to sociology to politics. I’ve often been puzzled by people’s tendency to treat weather as a frivolous subject. Weather kills hundreds of Americans each year, and that number is increasing. Weather also can be very expensive. A NOAA study found that the total cost of 391 extreme weather events since 1980 was $2.755 trillion, a stunning figure.

The tendrils of weather weave into politics quite often. The Lindsay Snowstorm of February 1969 is so named because New York City Mayor John Lindsay was blamed for the slow response to plowing and clearing the streets of 15 inches of snow. A more recent example is Trump’s painfully stupid hurricane Sharpie moment. While it became the source of many funny memes, it was no joke to forecasters trying to warn people and get them out of Hurricane Dorian’s path. Yet another example is George W. Bush’s failed response to Hurricane Katrina.

So, as we march through what is still looking like a much above-average hurricane season, I am probably one of the few who are wondering how this intersection of weather and politics might affect one of, if not the, most significant presidential elections in our lifetime.

Debby’s rains are forecasted to cause major to catastrophic flooding across a wide area that includes swing states Georgia and North Carolina. There likely will be some human suffering as a result. How fast the White House and FEMA respond would no doubt be under a microscope.

We also have four months of hurricane season to go yet and are a month away from the season’s peak. Along with a variety of issues including the stock market’s current fall, a possibly spreading war in the Middle East, and you know, one of the major political parties being anti-democratic, the Biden administration probably will have to deal with one or more major natural disasters.

The challenges here for Biden, from a political standpoint, are varied. One, Americans have a deeply bizarre reaction to the threat of severe weather – It Can’t Happen to Me. This is both strange because weather disasters do in fact happen, and also problematic. It can make these calamities even worse because people dismiss them until it’s too late. Another is the locations where these storms generally occur, the coastline from the Texas Gulf Coast all the way to Maine, which encompasses a lot of swing states. Another is the specter of a serious tropical system hitting several states right before the election wreaking havoc with infrastructure.

It might not seem like a major factor or concern right now, but the weather has a very rude tendency to insert itself in so many situations, whether we like it or not. The good news for Democrats and for people in the path of these storms, Democrats also tend to do much better when responding to their aftermath.

The last word, of course, goes to Jimmy Buffet.